1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer systems and more particularly to a mounting arrangement for mounting peripheral units of a computer system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, maintenance and upgrading of electrical equipment, especially equipment stored in rack mountable systems, has been extremely difficult because of the existing mounting mechanisms and because of the limited space available for the equipment. In many applications, including computer server systems, the components or subsystems and/or peripheral devices of the system are stored in a limited space area, in shelving units or racks, which serve a larger area of individual desktop stations. While the desktop units are relatively accessible from the rear to allow maintenance or upgrading, the same accessibility is often not available in the shelving units of the server system. The server systems are relatively heavy and cumbersome and their mounting and shelving arrangements are relatively stationary and bulky. When it is necessary to access the equipment components mounted in a shelving structure containing the server system, it has been necessary to perform considerable disassembly of the component enclosures to access the back end of the system components. Server external drive peripheral connections and cables are located at the rear of such external drives, i.e. for hard drives, tape, CD and floppy drives. This makes access to them, even after the cover is removed, difficult in most cases due to the presence of power supplies, boards, other external drives, and other various sheet metal and plastic parts. The user is, in some cases, faced with having to make blind connections, and in most cases, must navigate their hand through narrow sheet metal openings.
To alleviate some of the access problems of the past, in many component or peripheral mounting arrangements, peripheral units, such as hard drives for example, are mounted on removable sliding carriers. Such carriers are arranged to support a hard drive unit for example, which slides along rails that are mounted to a peripheral unit mounting cabinet or shelving structure. These component carriers are designed to be fully removable from the front of the cabinet. These component carriers are frequently held in place by a relatively large sheet metal front cabinet cover which must be removed in order to access and remove the sliding carriers containing the system hard drive units.
Recently, self-contained carrier units have been designed which include a front cover that aligns with the face of the cabinet such that the individual carrier may be slidably removed from the cabinet without removing the bulky cabinet front panel. However, such carriers, in many cases, are relatively loosely held in place and have therefore been vulnerable to damage from shock and vibration. Moreover, since most of these slidable carrier trays include an integral electrical connector or "hot plug", designed to automatically make an electrical connection with the rest of the system when the tray is fully inserted into the cabinet slot, the position of the slidable tray or carrier must be relatively stable and secure when in the closed position so that there is relatively little if any mechanical stress or strain imposed upon the electrical connector interface. That aspect is even more significant when the peripheral component is relatively heavy in comparison to the mass of the carrier supporting the peripheral component. In such an instance it is more likely that movement of the peripheral component on the carrier will loosen or even disengage the electrical connection between the carried component and the rest of the system.
Alignment of the carrier is also an important factor in the design of component carriers. In many instances, when component carriers are hastily placed into cabinets, the carrier is misaligned relative to the carrier space in the cabinet. The result of such misalignment is that the electrical connection at the rear of the carrier is either not made at all or only loosely connected and even more vulnerable to shock or vibration. These conditions may result in an unconnected peripheral device or a subsequent disconnection of the peripheral device and a related system malfunction.
Thus, there is a need for an improved peripheral component carrier system and apparatus for housing and supporting system peripheral components, which allows relatively easy and fast access to the peripheral component and also provides improved alignment and substantial support and positional stability for the peripheral component and carrier device.